Ecological Modeling (FOR 8515)

Approaches to Science

Inductivism - Scientific theories
are derived from the facts of experience acquired by observation and experiment.

Opinion and personal preferences speculative imaginings have
no place in science.

Scientific Knowledge is reliable knowledge because it is
objectively proven knowledge.

Falsificationism - Theories are
construed as speculative and tentative conjectures or guesses freely created
by human intellect in an attempt to cover come problems encountered by
previous theories and to give an adequate account of the behavior of some
aspects of the world or universe (Popper, 1968; Medewar, 1969).

Speculative theories are to be rigorously and ruthlessly
tested by observation and experiment.

Theories that fail must be eliminated and replaced by further
speculative conjectures.

Theories as Structures - Research
Programs - Theories need to be considered as a collection of theories that
define and guide future inquiry.

Theories as Structures - Kuhn's
Paradigms - Kuhn argues that science does not change by incremental improvement
but by paradigm shift when individuals view a relationship outside the
"normal view" and actually change the normal view of the field (Kuhn, 1970).

Rationalism versus Relativism

Extreme rationalist assert that there is a single,
timeless, universal criterion with reference to which the relative merits
of rival theories are to be assessed.

Relativists denies that there is a universal,
a historical standard of rationality with respect to which one theory can
be judged better than another. What is better or worse with respect
to scientific theories will vary from individual to individual or from
community to community.

Objectivism - holds that knowledge
or items of knowledge have properties and characteristics that transcend
the beliefs and states of awareness of the individuals that devise and
contemplate them (Popper, 1972).

Feyerabend's Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge
- Feyerabend makes the case that none of the existing methods of science
have been successful. He suggests the most important theories are not related
to any formal methods of sciences.

Realism - We have scientific theories that are human
constructions and that are subject to change and development.
Also we have the world to which the theories are mean to apply yet the
relationships described by the theories are assumed not to change.
What the the relationship of these two domains.

Also See :

Chambers, A. F. 1982. What is this thing called Science? Second
Edition. Open University Press, Buckingham. 179 pp.